


A Sense Of Death

by bluesaltire



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s03e17 Sunday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-25
Updated: 2011-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:11:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesaltire/pseuds/bluesaltire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s walking down the corridor, hand at his earpiece, giving them the good news. He can feel the elation of an operation gone well, of a disaster avoided. He can see the corner he needs to turn to get back to his patient. He can hear the relief in Rodney’s, and Radek’s, and John’s voices.</p><p>And then it changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sense Of Death

He’s walking down the corridor, hand at his earpiece, giving them the good news. He can feel the elation of an operation gone well, of a disaster avoided. He can see the corner he needs to turn to get back to his patient. He can hear the relief in Rodney’s, and Radek’s, and John’s voices.

And then it changes.

There’s a whole load of different sensations now and it’s difficult to separate them, never mind figure out which one came first. There’s light and sound and heat. A light that’s so intense it’s hurting his eyes before the flames are there. A roaring boom so vast and powerful it actually flings him down the corridor – faster than he could probably run but not fast enough to escape the fire. And a heat greater than any he’s felt before so that at first he thinks he’s actually cold.

And then there’s more sensation. A sort of weightlessness from the explosive force pushing him, shoving him forward so that his feet leave the ground. And the smell of his own flesh burning and the taste of fire in his mouth. But it doesn’t last long because he’s inhaled the flames and they’re burning past his throat, down and down until they steal the air from his very lungs.

But he’s only aware of all these different feelings, sensations, for a moment because he can feel the heat now. The heat and the raging agony that goes with it – encompassing his whole body. It overwhelms the feeling of plastic melting and flowing in his ear, of his body hitting the wall and crumpling to the ground. It crushes every other sensation, every other piece of information his body is trying to tell him.  
For a small eternity it’s the only thing he can feel.

But the fire’s still going and it burns away his nerves so that now he’s numb. He can’t feel his body being steadily destroyed, or hear the thunder of the fire. And it’s this strange lack of feeling that tells him he lost.

He didn’t prevent a murder; he’s just damned himself and the marine who came for the bomb. It’s almost a comfort to know that that brave marine was dead before the sound/light/heat ever even reached Carson. He didn’t deserve to feel his body burn because Carson wanted to save everyone. Because Carson was so sick of people dying horrible meaningless deaths that he couldn’t let one man go. One man who could explode at any second and was a danger to not just Carson and his staff, but everyone in the tower. That marine didn’t deserve to die because Carson disobeyed orders.

Carson thought that maybe he didn’t deserve to die either.

**Author's Note:**

> Written at 3am and unbeta'd, so please be kind.
> 
> ps. This is my first fanfic.


End file.
